Carl Hickman (William Fichtner) is a retired crippled cop living in the Netherlands (he has only real use of one of his hands due to a bad guy he has been pursuing shooting him in the right hand).  He is drawn in to work for a special investigative unit working for the International Crime Court in Europe investigating cross border crimes in Europe.  The unit is lead by Major Louis Daniel (Marc Lavoine) under the authority of Michel Dorn (Donald Sutherland).  The unit is comprised of cops from several different countries (France- (Ann Marie San), Ireland (Tommy McConnell), Germany (Sebastian Berger), and Italy- (Eva Vittoria)).  

 

CROSSING LINES is a European production with an international cast and an American show runner (who wanted a show highlighting the birth of a fictional European FBI-type unit born out of the desire to originally do a European spin-off of CRIMINAL MINDS).   The series is very interesting with a really likeable cast inhabiting flawed characters you really want to root for.   Eva Vittoria cares for the members of the team to a fault while Sebastian cares about his Scan Gen machine which can scan crime scenes (to create a virtual picture) and Major Daniel wanting to bring the criminal to Russian criminal Dimitrov to justice (for the death of Major Daniel’s son).  Meanwhile, Carl Hickman continues his quest to stop child kidnapper Genovese (who is using the carnival system to smuggle kidnapped kids).   The show works best with two part episodes, but the one episode stories also work along with the character subplots that appear in one episode to be followed up in a later episode (or episodes).   I am happy the series is back for a 12 episode second season, but the two part first season finale does fall on some clichés and basically sets up multiple cliffhangers with not much resolution.   The first eight episodes shows the promise of a good action cop series, but I really do believe they should focus more on two part stories and follow the formula of British crime drama like WAKING THE DEAD and INSPECTOR MORSE.

 

SPECIAL FEATURES:

Trailers for HANNIBAL Season One, MAD MEN, and WEEDS

 

BEHIDN THE LINES featurette- a ten minute promotional featurette with cast interviews, show clips and behind-the-scenes footage.  Tidbits include Dorn’s character became bigger after Donald Sutherland was cast and how it is different to shoot a production in Europe in addition to the series being about the birth of a European type FBI unit.

 

FINAL ANALYSIS:  CROSSING LINES Season One is a promising European crime series that fans of British crime drama and CRIMINAL MINDS should check out.  The cast and characters along with the unique European locations sell the show for me.  I do wish they had more extras than one 10 minute featurette.  Hopefully, they will have audio commentaries and more behind-the-scenes material for the Season Two set (and maybe even the Co-Production Case Study from MIPTV 2013).

 

This blu-ray review is ©1-26-2014 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission.  Send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com

 

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